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Last week I got sometime to study a bit of icon design, specially the Mac OS X icons. Among all Leopard icons the one that I like the most is the Time Machine one, it's really beautiful and the idea is very clever as well. With that icon in mind, I sort of challenged myself and I decided to recreate it in Photoshop to see how some of those effects work and, perhaps, start creating some icons as well. After a couple of hours I had gotten a satisfactory result, I think. So I decided to teach my girlfriend how to create the icon. Well, she stopped on the third step :). But I still think it’s a very useful tutorial. UPDATE: I think the tutorial will be published this week on PSDTUTS.

Isn't it freaky when you're reading a magazine, and then you notice that the cover model is missing her belly button? Or maybe that foxy red head has got the longest fingers in history? Yeah, that's more common than you might imagine. Photoshop Disasters is a blog dedicated to... photoshop disasters. There are pages and pages of those freakish images of semi-nude babes that you think are hot... until you notice a third hand... geez, disgusting. Check it out! Castles In The Air OMG. That's a three handed lady!!! I wonder if the dude noticed that little detail. Highlander Now we all know that they took the pictures without swords. I mean, why?? That's not to hard to hold a sword during a photo shoot. Jordache Nippleless. If that is even a word. Maxis The title for this one cracked me up: "Model Distorts Space-Time Continuum". Lol. These are only a few of it. Please, visit the blog to check all the disasters! Author: Paulo Antunes | If you want to write an article and have it published here send it via email to abduzeedo[at]abduzeedo.com

I’ve always been a fan of lighting effects and glows, I know, it might sound outdated but I like to recreate those effects in Photoshop. The last 2 Photoshop Tutorials I wrote, the Sparkling Hot Girl in Photoshop and the Break Apart, I explained how to do some of these effects mixing them with photos. Now, in this post I will show you some of the images that really inspired me to write those photoshop tutorials. There are some incredible designs, from guys like: Chuck Anderson, Leandro Demetrius, James White, Someone Graphic Design, and others. There’s one more thing, I’m already working on some tutorials using this technique for GIMP and PIXELMATOR. Leandro Demetrius http://www.flickr.com/photos/leandro_demetrius/ Signalnoise - James White http://blog.signalnoise.com/ DESIGNER--ISHHHH .... UM.... DESIGN PORTFOLIO http://www.leihi2.nl/old/works.htm NoPattern Chuck Anderson Someone Graphi Design http://www.soemone.com/ Various If you like this post, please help us to get some diggs.

In this tutorial we'll fuse an image of a Muscle Car and an image of a Hot Chick into one cool retro postcard design. Learn some brush, texture, and layer techniques to create a classic image everyone wants to get ahold of.
Step 1 We need to gather the assets for this tutorial. They are all available from istockphoto: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6. Go ahead and download these files. Let's get started by removing our model from her background. Step 2 Next create our working document. Make it about the size of a Postcard. Then place our Muscle Car Image. Then place our cut out model on top of the hood of the car. Do some Free Transforming to scale the model down to fit and rotate her a little counter clock wise. Step 3 First Draw a dark green to bright yellow gradient over our images. Then set the layer to Multiply. And then set it to 30 Percent Transparency. Step 4 Import our Paper Texture. Scale it down until it looks right. Then set the layer to Multiply and give it a Transparency of 90 Percent. Step 5 Import our Stars and Stripes Background to the top layer and set it to Hard Light. The grab the Eraser Tool with a Maser Diameter: 300 and a Hardness of 0 Percent. Now Erase the Background in the places where it overlaps the car and the model. This will allow the background to move to the back and fade the background around the edges of the model and car. Step 6 Import our Clouds and place them behind the Muscle Car. Then set the Muscle Car to Multiply. Use a large Eraser with a Hardness of 0 Percent and remove some of the clouds until your results match the image below. Step 7 The first image below is just to show you what we are accomplishing on the Paper Background. Grab a large Eraser, set the Brush Hardness to 0 Percent, and erase on the Paper Background layer right where the models head would be. Make sure your settings for the layer are the same as before. The second image shows the change to our image. Her face and torso stand out more now. Step 8 Let's make our ground stand out more. Import another copy of Stars and Stripes Background. Drop it just above our cloud layer and use a similar Eraser Brush as the last step and erase the top of this layer until your results match the image below. Step 9 The little details can make a big difference. Draw a selection around the models yellow bracelet. Create a new layer and color the selection orange. Then set the layer to Multiply. Next create a new layer below the model. Grab a small Brush and draw a shadow under the model. Then set the Layer Opacity to 50 Percent. Step 10 Type in the text ANYWHERE USA and place it at the bottom. I used Arial Black set at 54pt. Use the settings below to give our text a layer style. Step 12 Now let's add some brush work to give the design an old worn feel to it. In the first image you can see the Brush Tool chosen. On a new layer residing at the top of our document use a dark blue to brush the edges. View the effect in the last image of setting the layer style to Overlay. Step 13 Use the same kind of Brush as above and create Multiple Brush layers with different colors and opacities. Place all these at the top of our design. Work with it until your happy with your results. My results are shown below. I really like the brushes that started to glow when working with this. Look at the yellow brushes over the text for example. Those are set to Hard Light with an Opacity of 60 Percent. Step 14 Create a new layer right above our Muscle Car image. Grab another large Brush of the same style we have been using and give it a color of red. Set the layer style to Color Dodge and now wherever you brush it will glow a little bit. I mostly brushed around the Models head to get that to stand out a bit more. But I brushed a little in the bottom corners as well. Step 15 Now lets add some fingerprints so that it looks like this photo has been handled over the years. First lets cut out each fingerprint from our Fingerprint image. Then paste each one individually onto its own layer. Use the Free Transform tool to move them around until your happy. Keep in mind that the corners are where the most handling usually occurs in a Photograph. I also Erased a little bit of one of the prints as you can see below. Step 16 Now give your fingerprints varying levels of Opacity and Layer Styles. I used Darken on some and Multiply on the others. I used varying Opacities set between 40 percent and 100 percent. The last thing I did was go over the top Stars and Stripes background with the eraser a bit more so we can see the clouds break through next to the model. The results of our final image is shown below. Conclusion Fusing photos into a composition is fun. Textures, brushes, and grunge elements are a great way to pull these images together. And above all else never forget that muscle cars and hot chicks are a cool and classic design combo.Download the PSDClick here to download the Photoshop file. About the authorThis tutorial was written by Sean Hodge. Hi All! Tutorials are awesome. I'm really into writing them on my Illustrator and Vector Graphics blog AiBURN. I'm from the US, but living on the beach in Venezuela. My studio is Connection Cube. That's where I get to create graphics, design websites, and write for some great companies! I love working on creative projects!

Firstly I’d like to thank you all for the emails, I really appreciated them. Besides that, I’ve received some requests from readers, what is awesome because sometimes I don’t have much time to think on ideas for tutorials. The best thing about this requests is that I can learn new techniques and explore Photoshop in a new way. This new tutorial I’m writing is an example. Some users sent me emails asking how to create explosions, like breaking apart some objects in images. So yesterday I took some time and did my first image, you can see it below.UPDATE: THE TUTORIAL IS AVAILABLE AT PSDTUTS:http://psdtuts.com/tutorials-effects/seriously-cool-photoshop-explosion… I have to say, the breaking apart effect was easier than I thought, at least for this image. I will try new ways to achieve explosion effects as well. And please, keep sending requests.

I’ve seen some very nice images mixing photos with light effects and sparks. If you go to flickr in those Photoshop and Graphic Design groups you will see images with this effect. There’s a designer, I think he's Brazilian, who has some amazing designs using this style, his name is Leandro Demetrius and it’s really worth checking his work out. Anyway, in this tutorial I will show you how to create an image using this technique. It basically mixes some techniques from tutorials like Magic Lighting Effect, Amazing Photoshop light effect in 10 Steps, and the latest Create the MSNBC header effect. Step 1 Create a new document, mine is 800x600 pixels. After that double click on the background layer to open the Layer Style dialog box and add a Gradient Overaly. Select Radial for the Style and use a dark red to black for the colors Step 2 Select a nice photo, in my case an amazingly hot girl from the 30 Color and Pattern Inspiration Bikinis post. Select the Pen Tool (P) and start creating a path with the shape of the woman. Later we will convert this path to selection to mask the girl. Step 3 After you create a path with the shape of the woman, go to the Path palette, right next to the Layer Palette. You will see the path with the girl’s shape. Click on the dotted circle icon at the bottom of the box to create a selection from the path. Step 4 Back to the Layer Palette, select the girl’s layer and then go to Selection>Refine Edge. This command will allow us to adjust the selection in real time with some nice settings like feather, smooth, contras, and others. Make some tests with a black background. When you have a good selection click ok. After that go to Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal Selection. Step 5 Lets increase the contrast of our girl, go to Image>Settings>Brightness/Contrast. After that reduce the layer like the image below. Then add a bit of noise. Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Step 6 Group the girl layer so it will be inside a folder on the Layer Palette. Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M), set the feather option to 30px and create a elliptical selection like the image below. Now select the Folder instead of the girl’s layer and after that go again to Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal Selection. We will add the mask to the folder and everything inside the folder. Step 7 Double click on the girl’s layer to open the Layer Style box. Select Outer Glow. For the Blend Mode use Color Dodge and for the size set 35px. After that Duplicate this layer and go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. Use 43º for the Angle and 155 for distance. Make sure that the blurry layer is behind the normal layer. Step 8 Create a layer, not inside the folder anymore. This layer has to be behind the girl. Then go to Filter>Render>Clouds. Change the Blend Mode to Color Dodge. Step 9 Create another layer, behind the clouds’ layer. Now go to Filter>Render>Fibers... Use 13 for the variance and 4 for the Strength. After lets add another filter, this time Motion Blur, go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. The angle will 90º and for the distance use more than 300px like the image below. Step 10 First rotate the layer. Then select Lasso Tool (L) set 30px for the feather and create a selection like I did. Then one more time go to Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal Selection. After that double click the layer to open the Layer Style box. In the Layer Style’s first screen set the Fill Opacity to 60%, then add a Gradient Overlay, use the rainbow colors. Step 11 Here it’s all about brushes. But first create a new Folder in the Layer Palette and set the Blend Mode to Color Dodge. After that create the layers you want to be light inside of this folder and using white color. You can even add some different shapes and apply gaussian blur to create those rays of light. Conclusion This is one of those designs that looks a bit complicated when we see it at first. But when you start working on it, it turns out to be much easier than we thought. You can add different light colors, more or less sparks, or even explode some parts of her body. Well that’s another tutorial I will write about. Download the PSD file Click here to download the PSD file.

Today I saw that the guys at PSDTUTS.com published another tutorial I wrote, Reader Request: MSNBC Style Effect. It's a really nice effect and very easy to do too. One of the coolest thing in this effect is that you can use it to create lots of different designs. You can create a header for your site like MSNBC did, or you can create some compositions with photos. Here you can see the end result of the tutorial Get the 1440x900px wallpaper iPhone wallpaper And here is another image I created using the same effect but this time I mixed it with a very beautiful girl. I know the girl makes the design much better. Anyway I'm writing a tutorial showing all steps.

There's nothing better than to play with the tool if you want to learn it. Bert Monroy always mentions that on his podcasts and I truly agree with him. I think the best way to learn is trying to recreate images and effects we like. Here I list my 10 tips to improve your skills in Photoshop, but they can be applied to other tools as well. Besides of that leave a comment with tips and links that you think will help us to improve our Photoshop Skills as well. 1 - Start with something I know this might sound obvious but you need to have something like some drawings, sketches, or an image rather than just a white page. Otherwise you will end up doing the same effects every time you try do design something. Get inspiration from sites like Flickr, there are some very good photoshop groups. Or just look for inspiration on the web. Below are some inspirational links. 2007 inspiration 10 Photoshop Masters Masters of Illustration - Smashingmagazine 12 Invaluable Sites for Web Design and Design Inspiration 2007 Graphic Design Inspiration 2 - Don't be dissappointed Don't be dissappointed when your image or effect is not turning out the way you want, keep working. That happens with me all the time. When I first start designing, usually I get frustrated that my design is not becoming exactly what I had in mind. However it turns out that after I have all elements in my design it's easier to make it look the way I want. 3 - Try to recreate the effects you like. Every time I find an image that has an effect I like I save it and try to create that effect in Photoshop. The Fire effect I did trying to reproduce an Nike ad, and the gold effect when I saw a Jewelry Ad as well. 4 - Read tutorials before start doing your design. We usually go straight to Photoshop and try to figure out how to do the effect, it's nice but we can save a lot of time if we get some clues or ways to do that before we start the Photoshop work. There are very good sites where you can learn how to create all sorts of effects from gold text to glowing effects. pixel2life.com good-tutorials.com psdtuts.com veerle 100 Photoshop Tutorials 5 - Learn how to use Masks. I know this might sound odd but there are a lot of people that don't understand how to use Masks. So stop deleting parts of your image and start masking them. There's a very cool video that shows us how to learn Masks 6 - Play around with filters You can do all kinds of effects with them from blur to lighting effects. The most fascinating thing is if you mix some filter you always get a new result, like the Render Clouds. 7 - Spend some time learning the Layer Styles Layer Style is one of the most useful features in Photoshop. You can create amazing text effects without applying any filter or even touching the font. 8 - Brush Engine To be honest I had never payed much attention to this feature until 6 months ago when I was creating a falling star. After that moment I simply cant stop using it. You can create sparks, stars, clouds, and unlimited number of shapes. You can make your brush random or uniform, with different colors and opacity, and I could go on and on because the possibilities are endless Very good video explaining how the Brush Engine works Photoshop Brushes - Lynda.com 9 - Listen and watch podcasts I think podcasts are an excellent way to learn Photoshop. The Pixel Perfect with Bert Monroy is definitely a must see podcast if you want to learn Photoshop and Illustrator. List of Photoshop Podcasts Adobe Photoshop Quicktips - Video Podcast 10 - Share what you have learned with everybody I think when we learn something there's nothing wrong in sharing our skills. Besides of the fact that you can help others, you can promote your work and even get money from writing tutorials. Psdtuts.com pays you for each tutorial you write and then publish it if selected. Your Design Forums PSDTUTS - They pay you for tutorials Flickr Deviantart

If you know the right places to look at, you can just find any kind of tutorial. Love art, painting and all that? Here are 100 tutorials you must visit. 3DTotal brings us an awesome selection of 100 photoshop art tutorials that will teach you some neat techniques of how enhance your digital painting skills. And I mean, it's a whole 100 tutorials... that's a LOT. Here are my favorites. Remember, these are just a few of them. To visit the complete set, click here! Author: Paulo Antunes | If you want to write an article and have it published here send it via email to abduzeedo[at]abduzeedo.com

Last year I had written a tutorial showing how to create some lighting effects in Photoshop, it was called Magic Lighting Effects. A lot of people liked it, but some people still have some questions on how to achieve that effect. When I added a “buy me a coffee” featured on my blog I decided to use an image I had done when I was showing my cousin how to do the Magic effect. Instead of using a hat I used a coffee cup and the process is basically the same, however this time I will explain it in more details. Step 1 Create a new document, apply a Layer Style on the background layer. Add a Gradient Overlay and a Pattern Overlay. Step 2 Here I've used an icon I found on a cool site, but you can use whatever you want. Step 3 Select the Ellipse Tool (U) and create a shape like I did. After that apply a Gaussian Blur (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur) with radius of 30px. Step 4 Create a new Folder name it “Light Effects”. Change its blend mode to Color Dodge, and move the ellipse you created to this folder. Step 5 In order to create the sparks we will use the amazing brush engine. Add a new layer, inside the “Light Effects” layer, set white for the color and follow the images below. Step 6 Using the Layer Styles add a Outer Glow to the sparks Step 7 Lets add some smoke. Create a new Layer, call it “Smoke”. Change its blend mode to Color Dodge and select the Lasso Tool. Set 40px for Feather and create a selection like I did below. After that make sure that the foreground is white and the background is black and apply a Filter>Render>Clouds. Tip: Continue applying the filter until you get the best clouds. Step 8 Add some text and using the Layer Styles again lets create a nice effect. Step 9 Place your logo and you can even add more effects like I did on the Magic Lighting Effect, but then you will have to follow that tutorial ;). Conclusion I have to say, if you know a bit of Layer Styles and the Brush engine in Photoshop you will be able to create amazing effects. It will depend exclusively on your imagination and playing with the tool. Sometimes just changing a some settings and you get a totally different effect. The PSD file used in this tutorial can be downloaded here.

One of the best features in Photoshop is the Layer Styles. We can create all sorts of effects only using it, you can create, Plastic, Glass, Aqua, Ice, Metals, and many more. Last week I was talking to a friend of mine and he told me that he needed to create a gold effect in Photoshop. He tried to find a good tutorial online but he said he didnt find any. I'm pretty sure that there are good tutorials showing how to do that, however I created my own Gold Style. Now I'm writing a tutorial showing how to do that. It will probably be published at PSDTUTS.com, but you can take a look at the end result below. Desktop Version iPhone Version

Back from the New Year’s eve, I bit of hangover, I’d like to wish you all an excellent 2008. And celebrating the new year I created this new image that I will write a tutorial showing how to create clouds in Photoshop. They are not simply clouds, they are more a cartoon clouds, very colorful and stylish. The same I saw on another fantastic Nik Ainley’s work he did to Adobe and it’s on his website. You can get the wallpapers below. Desktop Version iPhone Version

One of the design styles I like the most is that with vintage images collages, mixed with handwritten texts, stains, spots, and tons of dirty things. It's fantastic the crazy things they come up with, like a person with a bird's head and stuff like that. So that's what I want to show on this post, some examples of this sort of work. There are excellent designers that we can consider masters on this subject. One of them in particular is a brazilian called Eduardo Recife. His work is fantastic and it’s totally worth checking his website out. Besides of that, you can find excellent images on Flickr, there are amazing groups where they are always updating with new works and experiments.

Celebrating the Abduzeedo's first anniversary, I have an interview with Justin Maller, one of the 10 Photoshop Masters I listed a long time ago in an article here on this blog. Justin Maller is a freelance graphic artist based in Melbourne, Australia. He has been creating digital art for over seven years, and has been producing professionally for the last 24 months. In July 2007 he released his first Solo Exhibition, which opened to a warm reception in Windsor, Australia. Justing is also the Creative Director of depthCORE, a world renowned international digital art collective established in june 2002. More information about Justin on his website at http://www.superlover.com.au/ 1- First I'd like to say that I really like your work, it's absolutely fantastic. Now tell me a bit of how did you start and discover that you wanted be a designer? Thank you kindly. I came upon this quite by accident really. I started messing around with scanned photographs in Photoshop back in 1998, and it all kind of snowballed. Art slowly became my primary hobby, depthCORE sprang up and flourished in 2002, but it wasn't really until early 2006 that I considered the possibility of any kind of professional career, when I started getting a little bit of attention outside the community scene and my first batch of jobs came in. Everything has just been very natural and organic since; my skills kind of developed in line with the work I was being commissioned to produce, and everything has kind of culminated in the last year or so. I've spent the bulk of this year freelancing fulltime, which was both a terrifying and joyous process. I recently accepted a role as an art director for a Melbourne based new media company, and I'm just starting to come to grips with the possibilities and opportunities that lay ahead. 2- Tell us about the apps you use? How long have you been using them? Photoshop is my main weapon, and I'm approaching ten years with the application. I'm 100% self taught; back when I began I didn't even have the internet, and there sure as shit weren't any magazines devoted to the subject, so the only way to learn was to experiment and work things out for myself. It still half amuses half annoys me that I managed to make a reasonable living writing tutorials for people who were unwilling or simply too lazy to devote the time it takes to learn for themselves. Aside from that, I've been using Bryce as a render and texture device for five years, and Cinema 4D for three, although my 3D skills don't really extend far beyond making my funky shapes! 3- What about your hardware? I have two computers, and both could really use an upgrade or two. Processor wise they are both quite good; one is a dualcore AMD 3.0Ghz, and the other a quadcore Zeon 2.66 Ghz, but both only have around 1 GB of memory – something I need to rectify immediately! It does go to show though; your capabilities are not restricted by the quality or amount of hardware under the hood, only by the quality or amount of imagination fueling the engine. 4- Tell us a bit of your career? Favorite project you worked on? Toughest project? My favourite projects have all been personal ones, such as the photo based series of collaborations I completed with Holly Bynoe from hbynoe.com or the illustrative set I did with Von from hellovon.com. Working with such talented artists from other disciplines is inspirational and motivating; it is the reason I do what I do. It makes me want to be better in every respect, and make me want to seek out new techniques and methods. It is also what sees me through the tough projects that every freelancer endures. Many will know what I mean, the client who has the smallest budget is the one who demands the most changes. I don't want to point fingers really, but there have been a couple of gigs where I would have made more money working at McDonald's than I did completing the job. It's frustrating, but occasionally unavoidable. 5- How do you come up with those amazing ideas and effects? Tips on how to create those effects? My creative process changes from piece to piece. Sometimes I will know exactly what look and effect I want to achieve before I even open Photoshop; other times I just experiment and let the ideas come to me. I think the main reason the effects I produce are somewhat unusual is that I am constantly trying to find new aesthetics and create pieces with different feels. Repetition is a good way to perfect a craft, but ultimately it gets boring, and without meaning to I seek different creative pastures. There are no tips on how to do this really; sit, play, experiment. Enjoy what you do, or else don't bother. 6- Who are the designers you like and inspire you? And the sites you visit to get inspiration, I'd really like to know ;) Being the Creative Director of the depthCORE.com collective provides me with all the inspiration one man can handle. A lot of people check portals and blogs daily to get fresh doses of inspiration; I just talk with my friends and watch the packs develop. It's honestly all I need; these guys are just amazing. For the sake of giving you a link or two to post, Theo Aartsma from sumeco.net just updated, and his work blows my mind. Jerico from www.jericosantander.com is another guy whose work is just bafflingly amazing, as is David Fuhrer of microbot.ch and Pawel Nolbert from hellocolor.com. All these guys call dC home though, so as I said, there's no other place out there for me! 7- Thanks for the opportunity to talk to one of the Photoshop Masters. Last question, Any advice for designers out there, who, like me are willing to improve their skills and become a master? Ask yourself honestly; is this what you love to do? Every day I wake up and can't believe that I get to go to work and make art all day long. It's even more amazing to me that I get paid for it; I'd be doing this with or without a paycheck – I'd find a way to support myself. If you're in this to be part of a scene or as a famewhore, the results will show in your work. True passion requires no effort, and no conscious thought. If you have it, you don't need advice from me. Your passion will give you patience, and your patience will give you skills. The answers lie within, grasshopper. Some works from his website

December is here, another year is ending and nothing better than creating a Christmas desktop wallpaper using Photoshop to celebrate that right? Well, maybe not. Anyways I created this image using paths, the brush engine and layer styles in Photoshop. Besides that, I used some amazing Christmas Icons I found online at http://www.iconarchive.com/category/christmas-icons.html The step-by-step tutorial will be posted soon at psdtuts.com, but below you can see and download the wallpaper in a 1440x900 version and the iPhone version. 1440x900 version iPhone Version

The last tutorial I wrote for the psdtuts.com was about how to mock up a business card using the Vanishing Point Filter in Photoshop. However some people asked me how they could do that without using that filter, or using other tools like GIMP, Pixelmator, and others. So that's exactly what I will in this tutorial. Instead of using the Vanish Point filter we will find the vanishing points and create the perspective. Step 1 First we choose something to be our background for the work, in my case, I chose a wooden table I have in my office. After that get a business card or a square piece of paper to use as reference and take a picture. Without moving the camera, get rid of the piece of paper and take another picture. Step 2 Open your photos in Photoshop and place them in 2 layers. Now lets make our Canvas Size much bigger, we do this to utilize our guides. Step 3 Here we will find the vanishing points (what is that?). They will be necessary to create a convincing perspective to our folder. Using the Line Tool (U) draw lines following the edges of our reference, like the photo below. The one from the left side and the one from the right side all the way up until they crossed each other. Repeat the same for the one on the top and on the bottom. Step 4 Now that you have the 2 vanishing points, we can place our object anywhere with the right perspective. However I first created a rectangle, with the Rectangle Tool (U), to find the best place for my folder on the grid. To do that use the Direct Selection Tool (A) and move the vertices of our rectangle. Step 5 Repeating basically the same actions for the Step 4, lets place the other side of our folder. Step 6 Here we will use the real images of our folder. Paste the images in new layers Using the Distort tool (Edit>Transform Path>Distort) just move the vertices to the same position as the rectangle we used as reference. Repeat that for the other side of the folder. Step 7 To make our folder more real we will use the Layer Styles. Lets add some Drop Shadows and a Pattern Overlay to the front side of the folder. Clicking with the right button of the mouse on the layer, copy the layer style and paste it to the other side of the folder's layer. Step 8 Select the one of our sides, duplicate the layer and convert it to Smart Objects. Add a Gaussian Blur (Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur). If you are not using the CS3 version just forget about converting to Smart Objects. Now just change the Blending Mode to Lighten. Repeat the same steps for the other image. Step 9 Lets organize our document. Try to use layer names that you will remember and group them in folders. After that select everything, but the guides, group them again and name it "content". Duplicate the group an and convert it to Smart Objects. Step 10 Here we will add some Depth of Field (DOF) to our image. With our Content Smart Objected selected, use the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M). Change the Feather Options to 80px and Anti-alias. Create a elliptical selection like the one I did. Invert the selection (Select>Inverse). Now Apply a Gaussian Blur again. We will notice that this will create that distance focus effect, everything gets blurry the further they get from the focal point. Step 11 Add a Noise (Filter>Noise>Add Noise) to make it a bit darker. Conclusion Even though we sort of applied a perspective, I want to say that it's not a totally real perspective. The idea here is to create a better look for our images using only Photoshop. So we will have to trust in our eyes. Observe the photo we took with the reference object and try to reproduce it. The more time we spend observing the more we will learn how to make our image look more realistic. Sample PSD Download the PSD for this tutorial

My latest Photoshop tutorial is available at psdtuts.com and it’s about using the Vanish Point Filter to mockup a business card. There are many instances when you will want to simulate or mock up how a design would look printed out and photographed. It might be for a portfolio piece, it might be for a client to help them imagine a concept design or it might just be for your own satisfaction at seeing how your work is going to look to the end user. In this technique we'll use a bit of perspective and the very useful Vanishing Point filter to achieve some great results. I will apply this technique to Collis' Sample Calling Card from a previous tutorial. The Vanish Point Filter is one of the most useful filters in Photoshop. It can be used in so many ways and it’s very hard to find good references showing how to use it. So it’s definitely worth checking it out. By the way, I will publish a tutorial showing how to achieve the same effect without using the Vanish Point filter for those who don’t use Photoshop.